How to Make a Portable Pig Pen

Our homestead started off with just two pigs, and we got hooked. We’re up to 13 now, and we’re even breeding our own piglets! Over the years we’ve experimented with many different types of pens, fencing and paddocks for them. By no means have we “arrived at” or discovered the perfect system. But we’ve made a portable pig pen system that meets three important design criteria for us:

Provides a lot of pasture space for the pigs

Can be fully moved quickly and easily (in about an hour)

The pigs never escape from

That’s a winner right there!

We really value being able to move the pigs often with our portable pig pen because it’s better for them. We’ve noticed they are happier when on fresh ground often. This also allows them to supplement the feed we give them with forage from the pasture. This cuts our feed costs and improves their health. They get to dig and root in the ground like pigs were meant to do! This also allows us to impact more of the pasture. We’re using the pigs to restore our pasture from sparse knapweed and sand, to a lush and diverse grassland prairie.

We soon learned that a basic fence charger wasn’t enough to “convince” the pigs to stay inside the fencing, so we upgraded to this 100mi Zareba Fence Charger. It’s at least 6 joules so it’s enough for even the largest farm animals. This also makes it so we don’t have to worry as much about mowing the grass wherever we want to put the fencing, because the grass isn’t enough to short it out.

For the portable step-in fencing we use electronet fencing, we recommend double spike. It’s very easy to setup and take down. Although if there is a lot of sticks and brush on the ground it can get tangled a little. Although it never takes more than a minute to untangle. You can avoid tangles by being careful when you’re pulling up the fence. It seems to work the best with two people working together like you see in the video.